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tl;dr some quick attempts to get inside the mindset at the Kremlin concerning events in the war, in the run-up to Putin's speech expected in a few hours. Everything below could be immediately and awkwardly falsified if he announces some desperate escalation like general mobilisation or a nuclear strike against a Ukrainian military target.
Ever since the Ukrainian successes in the northeastern campaign, I've been trying to get inside the mindset of the Kremlin to figure out what their likely response is.
One thing that is almost certainly true (and easily underestimated) is that they are in their own psychological bubble, and there is no elite team of intelligence operatives whose primary job is to give Putin objective analysis. Human minds don't work that way: we easily form fenced-off epistemic communities that downplay our shameful fears and play up our pride. You can even see this reading the reports of US decision-making throughout the Cold War, when interservice rivalry ran hot and the USAF nuclear strategy advisors were giving opinions based not on what was in humanity's interests or even the USA's, but instead what would get them the most planes and status compared to the army and navy. And of course, you can see it easily on reddit, even getting a rush of ideological whiplash as you flit from one politically aligned sub to another.
(What about people like Girkin? Well, he's a doomer, and an outsider, and his criticisms are mostly quite careful. As far as I've noticed, he talks about the conduct of the war, not the wisdom in initiating it in the first place; or he says that Russia should be more committed, without once questioning whether the war is winnable even with full commitment.)
Given all the above, I think a useful and necessary starting point for understanding Russia's position is to try to imagine what your view would be if Russia's strategic situation was a lot better than you probably currently think it is (this is one reason why contrarian posters are valuable to any subreddit that takes itself intellectually seriously).
What does this involve? Maybe it means you think that Ukrainian morale is weak. Maybe you think that the EU is less united than it appears, and winter will be harder than Europeans are prepared for. Maybe you think that the United States is being opportunistic and will drop Ukraine without looking back when the conflict starts to swing back Russia's way. Above all, you're probably convinced that there won't be another breakthrough like in Kharkiv oblast: that was a one off, heads have rolled, and now discipline and morale have been restored to the troops. Reinforcements are coming in, Iran is sending useful drones, and the forthcoming referenda will encourage a surge of volunteers from the DPR and LPR.
Let's say that you, like Putin, were in the grip of this relative sunny outlook. What would follow from it for your reflections on the wider strategy of the conflict?
Above all, I think you would be aiming to take the long view of things, because the fundamentals are on your side. Forget today's battles and next week's offensives - focus on longer-term military-industrial capacity, and associated active measures in the Russian and foreign populations. You probably don't want to risk a general mobilisation - that might compromise your longer-term war fighting ability - but you want to get as many new volunteers as possible, ideally from less economically active areas of the country. And finally, nuclear weapons wouldn't be on the table; after all, you're winning this war, albeit more slowly and less gloriously than you'd hoped. Why would you risk alienating friends and allies and giving NATO a chance to intervene?
But you might ask, at what point does this Pollyanna-Putin outlook begin to crumble? When does the filter bubble burst, and Putin has his Downfall-style meltdown? When Ukraine liberates Kherson? Lysychansk? Donetsk? Sevastopol? I think the only answer we can give here is that people in general are very bad at facing up to uncomfortable realities, and can keep themselves from accepting painful truths for their entire lives if necessary. Or think of psychologist's Leon Festinger's now famous work on cognitive dissonance on doomsday cults: when the doomsday prophecy fails, people will go to great lengths to avoid accepting that they've been duped. I expect Putin to go out the same way, with his final thoughts being confidence that Russia can still be victorious, even as he has an unfortunate fall from a window.
("What about you doglatine? Why are you so sure that Putin's the one in the filter bubble rather than you?" Answer: Well, I've been trying to make clear predictions throughout this conflict both online and to my circle of geopolitics friends - this post is in that same vein - and I'd say I'm fairly well calibrated so far in terms of events on the ground. Part of the appeal of making explicit predictions is to try to break yourself out of these epistemic lagoons in the first place. All that said, I recognise that of course I'm in a filter bubble, sometimes through deliberate choice (once the novelty value wears off, it's just not fun to consume propaganda you disagree with). But even if my intentions were pure, filter bubbles are all but inescapable. Usually the best you can hope for is to get good at spotting the early signs of a bubble collapse so you can make a clean exit with your life savings and a modicum of your dignity intact. But that's far easier said than done)
In any case, I am curious what others think.
I think we shouldn't assume that there are any moderates ready to take up Putin's job. Getting rid of Putin should not be our goal.
The second largest political party in Russia (behind Putin's United Russia) is the Communist Party. They support the war in Ukraine.
Zhirinovsky led Russia's 3rd largest political party, the Liberal Democratic Party, until his death early this year. Far from being liberal or democratic, the party is generally considered to be fascist if not megalomaniacal imperialist.
https://twitter.com/GodCloseMyEyes/status/1500973674811346946
All these parties are considered pawns of Putin to some extent but they have more of a presence than the genuine liberals. As I understand it, they're still reeling from the disaster of the 1990s.
Putin is the moderate candidate. If Russia loses we'll very likely get a much more exciting, much more dangerous leader. Since when did non-total military defeats in authoritarian countries ever lead to a strengthening of liberal forces? The specific conditions of a defeat and coup would be extremely unpromising - what patriot is going to work with the West given that our weapons were killing their troops just a few weeks ago? What is the point of replacing Putin if our options are communist Putin or fascist Putin?
I expect that Russia will begin to mobilize and start taking this war seriously, as they have made motions towards recently. There is no good reason for power to still be on in Ukraine, they have a great deal of ballistic and cruise missiles that could be striking power infrastructure. During the Iraq War the US intensively bombed Iraq's infrastructure until electricity output was at 4% of pre-war levels. There is no good reason for Russia to be outmanned by a smaller, less populous country. They have a large force of reservists. There appear to be motions towards recognizing Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson as parts of Russia. That would let them deploy their reservists 'legally'.
Conditional on them taking the war seriously by deploying the rest of their army and destroying Ukrainian infrastructure, Russia will start winning decisive victories. The war thus far has been an offensive war half-heartedly fought against a numerically larger, well entrenched defender. It's easy to see how the defender has an advantage in such a conflict. If all else fails, Russia has 2000 tactical nukes to Ukraine's 0. There's no level of grit or clever Western technology that can stand up to firepower of that magnitude.
Support for the war in Russia is fairly high.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/09/07/my-country-right-or-wrong-russian-public-opinion-on-ukraine-pub-87803
The physical fundamentals really are on Russia's side, the constraints are mostly imagined within the Kremlin.
Edit: Live speech from Putin: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iCdPPYtJeag
I think he's just announced partial mobilization.
You say that, but...
What do you think happens after Russia Turns Kiev Odessa and Lviv into mushroom clouds?
Firstly, tactical nukes would be used against formations in the field, not cities. That's what strategic weapons are for (of which Russia has 4000).
If Russia decided to vaporize Ukraine, the West would do nothing because Russia also has the capability to vaporize Europe and North America. That's what those strategic weapons were designed to do in the first place. I don't see why the US would commit national suicide by waging war against a nuclear superpower.
As I write this comment, I'm listening to Putin's live speech as he claims that other nations were threatening to use nuclear weapons against Russia, where he stated that 'the wind could blow against them.'
Most people probably overestimate the efficacy of tactical nukes against armoured formations. No-one knows for sure, of course, but there was a lot of analysis done in the Cold War when it was assumed that NATO would need to use tactical weapons to blunt any Soviet invasion of Western Europe. There are two big problems with using them in a battlefield capacity. The first is that most armoured units aren't conveniently bunched up in very tight proximity like buildings in cities, so the same kind of bomb that would devastate an urban area might only knock out a dozen tanks. The second is that armoured vehicles are very good at surviving heat and blast effects - one Cold War study found that tanks require approximately 45 psi of overpressure to be reliably rendered inoperable. The 10kT warheads on Russia's SSC-8 creates a fireball approximately 400m in diameter (probably fatal to tanks in the affected area), but once you get half a click away, overpressure has already dropped to 20 psi.
On top of these inherent limitations to battlefield use of small yield nuclear armaments, it's also worth remembering that the battlefield situation in Ukraine is VERY different from that which NATO was facing in 1970. Back then, NATO expected to be dealing with massed armoured columns attacking in accordance with Soviet Deep Battle Doctrine. The topography of Germany means that the majority of these would be funneled through a few relatively narrow corridors, most famously the Fulda Gap, thus creating favourable conditions for the use of battlefield nukes. Additionally, even if tank columns survived the nukes themselves, the expectation was that the roads, bridges, and infrastructure near the blast would be damaged so as to slow the progress of subsequent reinforcing units. All of this is very different from Ukraine, where the actual number of troops and armoured vehicles involved have been comparatively small, and largely dispersed across a massive front.
Ultimately, the best way way to use small-yield nuclear weapons to obtain results on the battlefield is to use them to systematically knock out an opposing force's command and control and logistics capacities within the theatre of operations by targeting communications, bridges, airfields, power supplies, etc., essentially doing with nukes what America did to Iraq with precision bombs in Desert Storm. However, this kind of effort is unlikely to be effective in piecemeal form; in order to permanently degrade Ukraine's ability to wage war in a given theatre of operations, Russia would need to be looking at the use of multiple bombs, perhaps more than a dozen. And since many of the relevant targets would be located in or close to built-up civilian areas, casualties among the civilian population would be high (the human body, unlike tanks, doesn't tend to do well with 20 psi of overpressure).
All of which is to say that a handful of small-yield nuclear bombs used exclusively against military targets is unlikely to create sustained military advantage for Russia, while incurring significant diplomatic penalty. In order to be decisive even within a theatre of operations such as the Kharkiv front, Russia would need to use multiple weapons and target military infrastructure and supporting civilian infrastructure, with attendant massive diplomatic costs. If they adopted this second strategy, they could almost certainly obtain a decisive advantage in the short-term, but the cost would be complete international opprobrium and the breaking of the nuclear taboo (this latter ultimately being advantageous for Russia as one of the five official nuclear powers). Moreover, it is likely that there would be overwhelming political pressure at that point for the United States to intervene at least conventionally in the conflict, significantly raising the risks of escalation to general (nuclear) war between Russia and the United States.
There are no easy nuclear options for Russia.
Absolutely, you would need to use dozens of weapons or more. They would be effective at destroying entrenched infantry and break up any large-scale counterattacks which require concentrated forces. But the Russians have thousands of weapons.
But why does everyone think would be overwhelming pressure on the US to intervene and join a nuclear war?
Imagine you're the US president. There's a nuclear war going on between Russia and a country you're not obliged to defend by any kind of treaty. The country with the single biggest arsenal in the world is using somewhere between 0.2-1% of its tactical nukes. The remaining 1990 tactical weapons are held in reserve, ready to be used against you. The remaining 4000 strategic weapons are obviously pointed at you. The whole Russian arsenal is on very high alert because this is a major crisis.
Why do you join and make yourself a target? Do you think the Russians, after just launching nuclear strikes, will back down now? After they've done extremely costly signalling to show their desire to win? What benefit does joining a nuclear war have for the US? Why is it worth it? Everyone here seems to think the US should or would intervene but I can't understand why!
The US has a longstanding position against the military use of nukes by other people, and has made firm and public "serious consequences will follow" statements to that effect. Admitting that this position was a bluff is credibility-destroying, and frankly, credibility is more difficult to build than cities.
Has the US promised to defend Ukraine under its nuclear umbrella? No. It's as simple as that.
You don't fight nuclear wars to defend countries if you don't even promise to do so beforehand.
I believe you may have overlooked the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, where the US promised to do precisely that.
A random detail of interest--the US Ambassador to Hungary at the time was the father of the current US Secretary of State.
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